Milwaukee residents who put their homes on Airbnb during DNC can expect more than $1,000 a night

A three-bedroom apartment, on the upper level of this Walker's Point building, is being offered through Airbnb.com for $2,400 a night during the Democratic National Convention in July 2020.(Photo: Tom Daykin / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

It won't be just hotels that will cash in when the Democratic National Convention attracts an estimated 50,000 visitors to Milwaukee.

People who list their homes for short-term stays through Airbnb.com can also expect to get bookings at higher rates — with some already booked at $1,000 a night.

That's according to some new research done by Anthony Pennington-Cross, a Marquette University finance professor.

"Everything is going to fill in the city," said Pennington-Cross, Marquette's Robert Bernard Bell Sr. Chair in Real Estate.

That event ran over four days, and drew an estimated 75,000 to 100,000 people from outside the Milwaukee area.

Pennington-Cross, using data collected by AirDNA, a firm that analyzes Airbnb and other similar firms, wasn't able to isolate his study to just the time during the Harley celebration.

So, that $150 average daily rate is understated, he told the Journal Sentinel.

But, based on that figure, Pennington-Cross predicted the average daily rate during the 2020 Democratic convention, which will run July 13 to 16, could be $200.

Pennington-Cross then multiplied that figure by the number of estimated available Airbnb hosts in Milwaukee. He came up with roughly $2.1 million that will be spent by visitors renting rooms through the service.

That's a decent piece of the total lodging tab expected for the DNC.

Convention organizers expect delegates and other visitors to spend $114 million throughout southeastern Wisconsin. Roughly $31 million could be spent just on lodging.

Regardless of how much Airbnb operators will charge, the fact that Milwaukee has a growing number of listings is good news for people who are coming here for the DNC, Pennington-Cross said.

Milwaukee had 1,500 Airbnb hosts by late 2018, according to the most current data, he said.

Based on the number of increasing hosts in 2017 and 2018, Pennington-Cross figures there will be 2,500 Airbnb listings available by July 2020.

Most of those listings are concentrated in neighborhoods near Lake Michigan, said Pennington-Cross, who looked only at Milwaukee and not its suburbs.

So, those Airbnb listings will be relatively close to the Fiserv Forum in neighborhoods that include the east side, downtown, the Historic Third Ward, Walker's Point, the Harbor District and Bay View.

Having those additional units could help ease concerns about whether some convention visitors will end up having to travel long distances every day to reach the event, said Andy Hunt, director of Marquette's Center for Real Estate.

Also, the Airbnb supply will somewhat temper what hotels can charge, Pennington-Cross said.

Two academic studies, published in 2016 and 2017, show that a 10 percent increase in Airbnb listings in a metro area results in a 0.4 percent decrease in hotel rates, he said.

Without Airbnb, Pennington-Cross said, hotels "would be able to charge more."